


i dreamed i held you in my arms

by rooonil_waazlib



Series: And Beyond [5]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, also me: writes this, me: i'm pledging not to write more fanfic until i finish my novel!, my contribution to the holidays 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-20 10:44:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17021193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rooonil_waazlib/pseuds/rooonil_waazlib
Summary: Feet up in Bucky’s lap, Steve takes a long sip of wine, not exactly looking at Bucky, but not quite looking away, either. Bucky rubs a thumb over the arch of Steve’s socked foot. “He’s cute, huh?” Bucky asks.A plaintive sound crackles over the baby monitor, and they both sit up a little, Bucky looping an arm around Steve’s ankles. But after a second it becomes clear that it’s just Adrienne, singing softly, and they both settle back into the couch. Steve takes another sip of his wine and stares down into it, tipping the glass one way and then the other. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, he’s cute.”Bucky looks at him, waiting for him to look back; but now Steve is either definitely avoiding eye contact, or seeing something intensely interesting in his wine glass. He must have seen something in Bucky’s body language, something that makes him uncomfortable. Maybe Bucky wasn’t being subtle, staring at Steve as he changed Morgan into his pajamas, bouncing him around the living room until he’d gone to sleep.





	1. Chapter 1

It’s quiet when Bucky gets home. He kicks off his shoes, scrubbing one foot over the warm hardwood, and turns to the library, where he can just hear the low murmur of Steve’s voice.

It hits hard, indescribable, and Bucky should have been prepared; he’d known that Steve had volunteered them to babysit Tony and Pepper’s newborn overnight while they attend some gala or other.

Still, seeing them there, Adrienne perched in Steve’s lap, his arms around her supporting the weight of the baby while she holds a bottle up—

Oh, it makes Bucky weak at the knees.

He’s on his way over when Steve looks up and smiles, and it’s breathtaking how badly Bucky wishes, suddenly, that that was their baby.

Ada looks up too and grins really big. “Look at how _little_ he is, Tateh!” she says. Bucky steps onto the padded carpet of the library and kneels, shuffling the rest of the way to the couch. Slipping one hand between Steve’s lower back and the sofa, he presses his other palm to the back of Steve’s hand supporting Ada’s smaller hand cupping the back of Morgan’s head.

He’s pretty cute, even though he’s Tony’s kid: big luminous brown eyes and a wisp of strawberry blond hair, his tiny chubby fingers gripping Adrienne’s pinkie where she’s holding the bottle. He blinks at Bucky.

“Wow, baby, yeah,” Bucky replies. He glances over Ada’s shoulder to where Steve has his mouth pressed against the crown of her head, looking down at the baby. “When did Tony drop him off?”

“Half an hour ago, is all,” Steve tells him, not looking up. “He apologized for not having fed him before they came, but—he was already all dappered up. I think they were heading straight from here to the gala.”

For a second Bucky just looks at Steve. He’s not sure Steve’s ever dealt with a kid this young. “You want me to take over here?” he asks. “I can, if you’d rather get dinner started.”

Steve glances at him and then away again. “No, it’s okay,” he says. “I mean. Unless you want me to.”

“Whatever you want, sweetheart.”

“I kind of half-started dinner anyway,” Steve tells him. “I was slicing vegetables when Tony showed up. Can you…?”

“I’ll go finish up.” Getting to his feet, Bucky leans down and kisses both Ada and Steve on the tops of their heads. “Call me, okay, if you need anything.”

Steve hums absently, and Bucky goes, glancing back once. Although he knows that Steve’s capable of handling the baby, Bucky finds he doesn’t want to stop looking at them.

He’s happy, here, with Steve and Adrienne—deliriously so, as Barton has pointed out on multiple occasions. It’s never really crossed his mind, the idea of having more kids—not because he doesn’t want any, but because it just hadn’t ever occurred to him as an option.

Swallowing, he picks up the knife that Steve had left and starts on the broccoli, remembering what Ada had been like as a baby. He’d been on his own, Sophie on her way to her post doc in Hong Kong. Most days he’d taken Ada to work with him; his lab had been big and empty and her baby-talk had filled a lot of space until Tony had approved his first job posting for an RA.

She’d had these huge starry eyes framed in a sweep of dark eyelashes; she’d laughed easily and although she didn’t seem to mind other people, she never seemed as comfortable as when he was holding her.

But it had been hard, finding the right balance. He’d kept her in his lab with him up until she’d been old enough to go downstairs to the Stark Industries daycare program, and that had worked up until the day she started kindergarten. It had only taken him a month or so to figure out he’d needed a nanny, which is where Steve had come in.

Dating and other—date-related activities—had taken a serious backseat, between work and Adrienne, and the idea of making their family any bigger really hadn’t occurred to him.

Now, though, seeing Steve with Morgan—the idea is there. If Steve’s uncomfortable with babies, maybe—maybe they could adopt an older kid?

Bucky dumps a pile of cut broccoli into the pan Steve must have set out and sighs, trying to think of something else to think about. They’re a ways off from that reality, and Steve had looked positively glum in there.

 

With Adrienne’s help, they put the baby to bed around eight. Once Bucky’s lowered Morgan into the little travel crib Tony and Pepper had provided, she folds into a cross-legged seat on the floor and stares through the mesh fabric at him. Bucky turns on the baby monitor and sets it down on his own bedside table, passing its mate to Steve.

“Try not to wake him, okay, sweet?” Bucky murmurs, giving the top of Adrienne’s ear a little stroke with the tip of one finger as he passes her. She nods, and he and Steve tiptoe out, pulling the door most of the way shut behind them.

“Glass of wine?” Steve asks, and when Bucky agrees, he leads the way to the kitchen, putting the baby monitor on the counter and cranking up the volume. While Steve opens the fridge for the half a bottle they’d started last night, Bucky pulls out two glasses; once they’ve both got a glass they retire to the couch, moving the baby monitor from the counter to the coffee table.

Feet up in Bucky’s lap, Steve takes a long sip of wine, not exactly looking at Bucky, but not quite looking away, either. Bucky rubs a thumb over the arch of Steve’s socked foot. “He’s cute, huh?” Bucky asks.

A plaintive sound crackles over the baby monitor, and they both sit up a little, Bucky looping an arm around Steve’s ankles. But after a second it becomes clear that it’s just Adrienne, singing softly, and they both settle back into the couch. Steve takes another sip of his wine and stares down into it, tipping the glass one way and then the other. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, he’s cute.”

Bucky looks at him, waiting for him to look back; but now Steve is either definitely avoiding eye contact, or seeing something intensely interesting in his wine glass. He must have seen something in Bucky’s body language, something that makes him uncomfortable. Maybe Bucky wasn’t being subtle, staring at Steve as he changed Morgan into his pajamas, bouncing him around the living room until he’d gone to sleep.

Resting his head on the couch back and sighing, Bucky takes refuge in the purply-red depths of his own wine. It should be weird to think about—he and Steve, growing their family; it’s big shit—but it isn’t. He’s—Steve started out as Ada’s nanny, for shit’s sake—he’s good with kids. He’s a great mommy for Ada. It—it just makes sense, and _god_ but Bucky loves him. Rolling a sip of wine around on his tongue, Bucky rubs the leg of Steve’s pants between his fingers.

“What was Ada like?” Steve asks, suddenly. “When she was—you know, when she was a baby.”

Without looking up Bucky rubs the tip of a finger along the rim of his glass. “I don’t think I slept for, like, six months,” he says.

“She didn’t sleep, huh?”

“No, she did.” When Bucky lifts his gaze, Steve is looking at him, finally. “She did. I just—I spent a lot of time watching her while she did.” He laughs a little, and so does Steve, his eyes soft. “I took her to work with me every day. I was pretty new at StarkSpace, so for a while it was just her and me, in my lab.”

Steve’s eyes go distant. “That big space?” he asks, wrinkling his nose. “Just the two of you?”

“She was pretty chatty.” Bucky leans his head back again. “Tony used to—I got in this habit, right, of putting her in a sling and carrying her around with me while I was building stuff, or whatever. But I would kind of—sway—” he makes a motion with his hand, waving it slowly this way and then that, like he’s conducting an orchestra in a slow waltz—“I’d sway while I was holding her. And I’d do it even when I wasn’t carrying her. Tony used to have to physically stop me from doing it. He said it made him nauseous.”

Steve grins into his glass. “God,” he mumbles, and then says something else, low enough Bucky doesn’t quite hear it.

“Hm?” he asks, but Steve just waves a hand. Bucky catches it and kisses his knuckles before letting go. “Ada…was such a sweet baby. Everyone said so. But I think you’re the first person she liked as much as she liked me.”

A blush pinks Steve’s cheeks. He shrugs a shoulder self-consciously, and seems about to speak when the baby monitor goes from singing _You Are My Sunshine_ to the unmistakable wails of a newborn.

Immediately, Steve sits up, reaching out one long arm to put his wine on the coffee table, but Bucky seizes his ankles. “I’ll go,” he says. “You relax.”

Steve settles back, pulling his legs off Bucky’s lap. Depositing his wine, Bucky gets up and starts toward the bedroom, stopping only when Steve grabs his wrist and pulls him down so he can kiss him.

Bucky rubs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, you just relax,” he repeats, and goes to collect the baby.

 

Steve, unfortunately, is a lighter sleeper than Bucky, so he’s already climbing out of bed when Bucky actually wakes. Morgan’s only just starting to cry. “Mnuh?” Bucky asks, flailing around a bit as he tries to check the clock and finds himself trapped in the sheets. It’s just after one o’clock.

Pushing himself up, he looks around; Steve leans over the bed and presses a hand flat to Bucky’s chest. “I got him,” he murmurs into the dark. “Go back to sleep. You can get the next one.”

Clumsily, Bucky pats at Steve’s hand and sinks back down to the mattress, smacking his lips. “Okay,” he mumbles, “okay, sweetheart.”

He doesn’t quite go back to sleep, even though Steve collects Morgan and leaves the room altogether, swinging the door most of the way shut behind him. He drifts, but rouses again when Steve sneaks back in half an hour later and puts Morgan back into his crib. When Steve climbs back into bed, Bucky rolls over and crowds up against his side. Sleep pulls him in, but before it takes him entirely, he remembers to pull Steve’s arm close around him too.

 

Steve’s quiet when the alarm goes off the next morning. Somehow it had been him up with Morgan each time he cried, not Bucky, so Bucky takes the morning shift, getting Ada ready for school and zipping Morgan into his Louis Vuitton baby coat. He takes Morgan along when he walks Adrienne to school, not wanting him to keep Steve awake.

Ada gasps as they round the corner onto the block where the school is. “Mr. _O!_ ” she yells, waving with one hand, the other tugging at Bucky’s.

Thor, on crossing duty, looks up and waves to them. “Can we bring Morgan to meet Mr. O, Tateh?” Adrienne begs, skipping along at Bucky’s side, “I want him to meet Morgan.”

“Yeah, okay,” Bucky agrees, letting her pull him that direction.

Thor catches Adrienne before she accidentally careens into the street, picking her up and swinging her around while she cackles. “You’re getting so big, Adie!” he announces as he puts her back down. “That’s why I’m not teaching you anymore. You’re too big for me!”

Dragging him by the hand, she points at Morgan in Bucky’s arms. “Mr. O, this is Morgan. He’s Uncle Tony’s baby,” she tells him. “Isn’t he _so_ cute?”

Thor leans over Bucky’s shoulder and tickles at Morgan’s chin. “Very cute,” he agrees, and steps back so he can look at Bucky. “You’re working today? I can take Adie into school. You should get that one home out of the cold.”

Bucky kisses his daughter goodbye, even though she’s barely paying attention, too busy yammering at Thor about their Hannukah and swinging from his hand like a pendulum. Then he heads home, already inventorying all the stuff he’ll have to collect to bring Morgan back to Tony and Pepper.

Steve’s not asleep when he gets back. Instead he’s lying in bed, curled around a pillow, staring at the crib. When Bucky comes in, still carrying Morgan, he jerks and looks up. “Hey,” Bucky says, coming over for a kiss. “You been up long?”

Steve shrugs a shoulder. “Not really,” he replies.

For a second Bucky examines him, but his face is completely blank. “Can you keep an eye on Morgan?” he asks. “Just while I shower. I’m supposed to meet Tony at nine at the office, kid in tow.”

Steve sits up and takes Morgan from Bucky. “I’ll get him ready to go.”

 

Tony’s working on some sort of motorized stroller when Bucky shows up, crib folded up and strapped to his back, Morgan in the sling on his chest, dragging the suitcase full of diapers and toys and other shit that had come with him.

As soon as Tony sees him coming he tosses his screwdriver over his shoulder and practically bounds over, already reaching out for his son. “Hey, buddy,” he murmurs, reaching into Bucky’s sling and lifting the sleeping baby out of it. “Hey, hey. Guess who missed you last night.” Bucky starts divesting himself of the items he’s still carrying, finally taking the sling off and hanging it on one of the chairs nearby. Tony settles Morgan against his shoulder and jerks his head at Bucky. “How’d he do last night? When do you guys want to take him again? Pepper and I have this holiday party next week—I was thinking—” he trails off when Bucky shakes his head frantically. “No?”

“Don’t ask Steve, okay,” Bucky tells him. “He’s—I don’t think he—I’m not sure he’s really—into—babies.”

Tony stares at him for a long second, rubbing Morgan’s back. “Is—uh, is everything okay, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal?”

Bucky hesitates for a second; he doesn’t want to air all his and Steve’s dirty laundry, but it’s not like he can talk to Steve about it, not right now. He doesn’t want to seem like he’s asking for something that Steve feels he can’t say no to. “He just—was acting weird. I think maybe he—isn’t really a big fan of babies.”

Tony pulls out his phone and taps around for a second, then passes it over. It’s his message chain with Steve:

_SR: Bucky’s on his way over with Morgan. He’s SOOOO cute!! Let us know when we can have him for another night. :)_

Bucky stares at the message so long that the phone goes dark in his hand. He passes it back to Tony. “That’s nice of him,” he manages to say, not looking at Tony or at Morgan’s pudgy little baby face, squished up against his dad’s neck. “I—we’d be happy to take him. Whenever. Yeah. Uh. Yeah. Let us know.”


	2. Chapter 2

It’s still dark when Bucky wakes on Christmas morning; the clock says it’s 5:37, which means there are approximately twenty-three minutes until Adrienne wakes up. Their bedroom is chilly, and he snuggles up against Steve’s side, sticking his cold toes under Steve’s warm thigh.

Steve gasps hard through his teeth, and Bucky opens his eyes to see Steve already awake. “I’m so glad Ada doesn’t believe in Santa,” Steve says, gathering Bucky up into his arms. “Makes everything—” he kisses at Bucky’s face—“so much easier.”

Bucky hums and wraps himself around Steve as much as he can, tipping his head into the kisses. The specter of Adrienne waking up and coming in to drag them to presents means they can’t do much more than this, but Bucky still lets himself enjoy it, the slow rhythm of Steve’s body against his, their mouths slick against each other’s.

Finally they break apart. “Merry Christmas,” Bucky mumbles. Steve grins, responds in kind, and gropes him, making Bucky yelp, and then disentangles himself and sits up.

He yawns. “Coffee?” he asks. “I was thinking of making Adrienne a hot chocolate, too. Do you think she’d like that?”

Bucky curls up around Steve’s back and gives him a squeeze. “You’re the best mommy in the whole world.” Then he lets Steve go, watching as he slips from the bed and out of the room.

Only when Steve is gone does he sigh and let himself mope a little. Steve _is_ the best mom in the whole world. Ada says so, and Bucky firmly believes her. If Bucky had his way, he’d be the best mom in the whole world to more than just Adrienne. Bucky just…doesn’t know how to broach the subject.

Eventually Bucky gets out of bed too; this isn’t the day for maudlin thoughts like this. He scrubs both hands over his face and then collects himself, pulling on one of Steve’s hoodies and shuffling out toward the kitchen through the living room.

The Christmas tree—only the second Bucky’s ever had in his house—is lit, glowing warm amber and sparkly silver. It’s so, so pretty, and Bucky doesn’t stop looking at it until he’s through the door into the kitchen.

The only light is what’s spilling in from the living room, and Steve’s mostly in shadow as he moves along the counter. There’s a little pot on the stove, probably full of milk; the espresso pod machine is humming.

Bucky watches for a long moment as Steve prepares all of their warm drinks—the coffee into regular mugs, the hot chocolate into a travel mug with a metal crazy straw stuck through the lid’s drinking hole, so Adrienne doesn’t spill it. His hair is sticking up in odd places where he’s slept on it; he’s shirtless, because he runs like a furnace. Bucky doesn’t, and looking at him is making him cold, so he heads over to the thermostat and cranks it up until the heat kicks on. Then he walks over to Steve and wraps himself around him.

“Hey,” Steve murmurs, reaching back to rub a hand in Bucky’s hair. He lays his other hand over Bucky’s forearm around his waist and pulls him along as he crosses the kitchen to the pantry, where he pulls out the tin of stroopwaffels that Nat had brought back from her last business trip to Amsterdam. They walk in tandem back to the counter, where Steve balances several on the two open mugs to warm up.

Releasing him, Bucky takes one of the mugs. “Thanks, honey love,” he says, picking up Adrienne’s travel mug in his other hand and taking both with him into the living room.

Steve follows, leaving his mug on the coffee table and muttering something about finding a shirt; as he vanishes into the bedroom again Bucky takes the bottommost stroopwaffel from atop his coffee mug and bites into it. He turns on the gas fireplace and watches as it spouts to life, the flames going from blue to orange as they heat. When Steve returns they curl up on the sofa together, drinking their coffee, replacing the cookies in stacks on top of the mugs between sips.

Neither of them speak much. It’s nice just to sit here, in the dim, the sun rising behind them, and wait for Adrienne to wake up.

But Bucky’s imagination is running wild, picturing them here, just like this, with one crucial difference: the heat of a baby asleep against his chest, Steve curled around the both of them. He chugs his coffee so he doesn’t blurt it out. They need to have this conversation, obviously—but right now, with the possibility of Ada interrupting it, seems like a bad time.

It isn’t much longer before she appears, rubbing her eyes, her buffalo plaid onesie pajamas twisted a little around her legs. “Hey, starshine,” Steve says, sitting up and reaching for her, “Merry Christmas.”

She clambers into his lap and watches as he fixes the ankle cuffs of her pajamas. Bucky watches, too, aching a little somewhere in the vicinity of his lungs. “Merry Christmas,” she says, and takes the travel mug when Steve passes it to her.

Bucky gives her the warmest of his stroopwaffels, and the three of them sit in silence for a few minutes until Steve finally passes Ada into Bucky’s arms and gets up. Going over to the stereo, he plugs his phone into it and fiddles for a minute, turning the volume down with his free hand so that the strains of Frank Sinatra singing “Jingle Bells” isn’t too loud.

“You ready to open some presents, starshine?” he asks, crouching beside the tree to read tags. He collects three gifts and brings them back to the couch, tucking one up against Bucky’s leg, nudging one onto Ada’s lap, and sitting down with the third.

Taking the travel mug and putting it back on the coffee table, Bucky takes a moment to rub Steve’s knee while Ada reads out the tag: “To Ada, love, Tateh and Mommy.”

Carefully, she tears into the nutcracker paper, slowly but surely revealing the new Lego set they’d selected for her a few weeks ago. For a very long moment she just looks down at it; then, contrary to what Bucky, at least, is expecting, she sniffles.

Steve gives him a panicked look; Bucky shrugs, as baffled as he must be. “Malkeleh?” he asks, tipping around so he can see her face. She’s crying, though as he watches she firms her mouth as if to stop herself. “Sweet, what’s wrong?”

She sniffs again, big, so big her back straightens, and wipes at her face with her sleeve.

“Ada?” Steve asks, slipping off the couch to kneel next to them, put an arm around her. “Adrienne?”

“I—” she hiccups—“I thought—you—were—gonna—give me—a _brother_.” She drags out the last word on a cry, wrapping both arms over her face so even Bucky can’t see her, and curls down over the Lego box, wailing.

Over her head, Bucky’s eyes meet Steve’s, but he can’t hold them for long, instead turning back to their daughter and rubbing his hand over her back, above where Steve’s arm is around her, avoiding touching him. “Malkeleh,” he tries, not even sure she can hear him over how loud she’s crying, “malkeleh, it doesn’t work like that, sweet. We can’t just—get a baby, okay? And even if we could, we wouldn’t be able to put him under the tree all wrapped up like that. I…” What is he supposed to say?

Steve shuffles even closer, so close he’s practically sitting on Bucky’s feet. “Why didn’t you tell us that was what you wanted, starshine?” he asks, and as he tucks his face up against Adrienne’s little neck Bucky can’t help but look at him, really _look_ at him. But he can’t see Steve’s face, just the little furrow on his forehead, which could just be his skin smushed up against Ada’s.

Adrienne doesn’t answer. The three of them sit there like that for a long time, rocking a little, until she calms enough that their promise to think about it placates rather than upsets her.

But the spell of the morning has broken. None of them is particularly enthusiastic about the rest of the gifts, and once they’re done Adrienne announces that she wants to watch a movie.

Steve queues up _The Princess and the Frog_ , and then disappears into the bedroom.

For a while Bucky sits with Ada, though she’s curled up on the far side of the sofa from him, clutching her stuffed rabbit Kite to her chest, one foot tucked under the other. But after a bit he can’t stand it anymore, and stands as well, leaving his coffee—now cold—on the coffee table. He grabs the blanket slung over the back of the couch and covers her with it. “I’ll be back in a minute, okay, sugar?” he tells her. She shrugs a shoulder, not looking away from the screen, and he heads for the bedroom.

The door is shut, but when he knocks, Steve says, “yeah,” so Bucky opens it, slips through, pushes it most of the way closed again.

Steve’s sitting on the end of the bed, staring down at his hands. Despite not knowing exactly what he’s thinking, where he stands on this baby situation, something in Bucky rings at the same exact frequency as Steve.

“Yeah, same,” he says, and sinks down next to him on the mattress.

For a long second, the only sound is the muffled Disney music from the other room. Finally, Steve inhales, sharp, and waves a hand vaguely. “I don’t want her to think she’s not—enough. Or you.”

“What do you mean?” Bucky asks.

Steve hugs himself, then, propping his heels on the bedframe. When he speaks next his voice is hoarse. “I don’t want either of you to think that I’m not—happy. With just the two of you.” He shakes his head. “I don’t—need—anything more than this.”

Glancing at the door to make sure Ada’s not going to hear him, Bucky nudges Steve’s knee with his own. “What the _fuck_ are you talking about?”

He watches a muscle work in Steve’s jaw. “I—don’t want either of you to think that I—that I want another kid because—” he huffs—“I don’t know, because Ada isn’t…isn’t _mine_ enough. I’m. I don’t want her to think that I don’t think of her as my daughter.”

“Well.” Bucky hesitates. Licks his lips. He just—needs to be sure. “You…you _do_ , don’t you?”

The glare that Steve whips around to give him is enough of an answer, but Steve says it anyway. “Yes, _of course_ I do. See?” He gets up, paces to the closet and back. “See, I knew you’d think that. That’s why I—why I haven’t—” he scrubs both hands through his hair, standing just a few feet in front of Bucky. “ _God_.”

Bucky gets up too, at a loss for what else to do. Taking Steve’s wrists, he pries his hands away from his face and steps in close so he can nudge their noses together. “I believe you,” he whispers. “I promise I believe you.” Steve takes a shuddering breath in, and Bucky rubs his thumbs over the insides of his wrists, pulling until the backs of Steve’s hands are against his chest. “So, can I ask you? Do you want to have more kids?”

Finally Steve meets his eyes, so close Bucky can see the little gold flecks in his irises. His knuckles press against Bucky’s collarbones. “Desperately,” Steve admits. “Bucky, _desperately_.”

“Okay.”

“But,” Steve rushes on, “but not because—not because I’m not happy with how things are. I _am_ , Bucky. You and Ada have to know that.”

Bucky rocks forward, because he can’t help how badly he wants to kiss Steve right now. “Judging by how she reacted to not having a brother under the tree,” he says, “I think she knows it.”

Steve curls his hands down until his fingertips brush against the backs of Bucky’s. Obligingly, Bucky shifts his grip up until they’re holding hands. “What about you?” Steve asks.

“Given how badly I’ve been nesting ever since the day I goddamn met you,” Bucky says, “I think I want Ada to have a brother, too.” Steve gives him a small, watery smile, which Bucky returns. “Or a sister. I’d be okay with that too. Or both, even.”

Laughing wetly, Steve leans his weight into him, sticking his face into Bucky’s neck. “I want lots,” Steve says, low into his ear. “Enough to—to make a soccer team.”

Bucky laughs, because he can’t help himself, because they’re going to have kids—because he is going to get to watch the love of his life raise a whole series of children to grow into good, fair, righteous human beings, just like him. “Maybe we can negotiate that number,” he says.

Steve twists his hands out of Bucky’s, but only so he can wrap them around Bucky’s body. Bucky grabs for him too, places a kiss on the side of his head.

“I guess,” Steve says, and gives a big sniff, just like Adrienne had done, right in Bucky’s ear. “I guess we can start with one and see how far we get.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i thought about posting this christmas day but i have a feeling i won't have time so i hope this will do. [<3](http://rooonil-waazlib.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> i might be going off the deep end. you can let me know if i am [here at my tumblr](http://rooonil-waazlib.tumblr.com).


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